


His baby girl

by smkkbert



Series: The adventures of parenting teenagers [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, family au, parenting, teenage kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 22:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7732396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smkkbert/pseuds/smkkbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver overhears his daughter saying something he wished he hadn't heard, and he realizes that letting go of your children is a lot harder than he ever thought was possible.</p><p>(inspired by a comment on "A very private moment")</p>
            </blockquote>





	His baby girl

“Mor-“ Felicity started, but was interrupted by a long yawn,”-ning.”

Chuckling, Oliver turned his head over his shoulder to look at her. She was standing in the door frame with messy bed head and dressed in one of his white shirts. Oliver smiled. He had always thought that she was the most beautiful when she was looking like that, natural without any effort.

“Morning,” he replied, turning his attention back to the omelet. “How did you sleep?”

“Very good,” Felicity answered. She stepped behind him, put her arms around his waist and snuggled the side of her face to his back. He could hear her breathing him in before she breathed out with a low sigh. “Just waking up without you wasn’t so nice.”

“Sorry, but I couldn’t sleep anymore, so I figured that I could just come down here, brew you a coffee, make you breakfast, go on a morning jog and still be in time to be here when Emmy wakes up. She has turned into such a late sleeper. I remember the times she woke us before five a.m. because she couldn’t sleep anymore and wanted to have fun, and Emmy really wasn’t the gentlest when trying to wake us up.”

He could feel Felicity smile against his back before she explained, “Well, Em is in college now. We both know that _everything_ changes during college time.”

“She can try to make me call her ‘Em’ as much as she wants,” Oliver replied, putting the omelet from the pan to a plate, before he turned around and pressed a kiss to the tip of Felicity’s nose, “I won’t.”

There were some things he just didn’t want to change and thinking about his baby girl growing up so much that she didn’t want to be called ‘Emmy’ anymore was definitely one of that. She had been twelve maybe when she had tried to enforce the nickname ‘Em’ the last time, but she had given up quickly. She would give up this time, too.

“Sit down at the table,” Oliver suggested, “and I will serve you your breakfast.”

“You will serve it?” Felicity replied with a smile. “That sounds great.”

She straightened up to the tip of her toes to kiss him gently, and Oliver put his hands to her hips and pulled her even closer against him. He had stopped wondering how you could still be that much in love with someone as he was still in love with Felicity a long time ago. At some point in their more than twenty years of marriage he had just learned that it was possible, and he didn’t only love Felicity, but was still head over heels in love with her.

He watched her sitting down on the small kitchen table, pulling one leg to her chest, before he poured her a mug of extra strong coffee, took the plate with the omelet and placed both of them in front of her on the table.

“I will run now,” Oliver stated while Felicity was already inhaling the scent of the coffee. “It won’t take long.”

“Yeah, yeah… just leave me alone,” Felicity said with a dramatic sigh. “A run is so much more important than having breakfast with your wife after you already left her in bed.”

Oliver pressed his lips together, leaning down to her eyelevel. “Do you want to share the coffee with me?”

“Okay, go for your run right now!”

Chuckling, Oliver leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the crown of Felicity’s head. He whispered a quiet “I love you” before he headed to the door. When he stepped outside, he took in a deep breath, enjoying the fresh morning air. It was his favorite time to go for a run. Not thinking for too long, Oliver started running towards the little woodlot that wasn’t far.

He had to admit that it had been awhile since he had felt that carefree the last time. It had been seven weeks to be exact because it had been seven weeks since Emmy had been here the last time. Since she had started college and moved to Boston, he felt like he barely ever got to see his baby girl anymore.

He knew Emmy would hate to hear that he was still calling her his baby girl when talking or at least thinking about her. At the age of nineteen she felt too adult to be called someone’s ‘baby girl’ though the times that she had really complained about that had been over when she had turned seventeen. She wasn’t especially embarrassed by her father’s affection to her anymore – thank god those dark days of puberty were gone! – but she felt too adult to be his little baby girl anymore.

Like she would actually ever stop being his little baby girl!

Emmy had been his little girl from the second Felicity had come home and told him that she was expecting their first baby. He remembered holding her for the first time when Felicity had dozed off after the birth and the nurse had brought her back to the room after measuring and scaling and washing her. She had been so tiny that he had almost been scared that he would crush her in his arms. Two years later Tommy had been even tinier, but Oliver had been used to holding a young human being by then.

With Emmy everything had seemed more difficult because it had been a first. She had been the first tiny person he had held in his arms because he had never dared to hold Sara when she had been so small. He had been too afraid that holding her would only make him realize what he had wanted and felt he couldn’t have even more than seeing her had already done.

It just felt like yesterday that he had first held Emmy, and now she was a young woman who was going to college and partying and only visited once in a few weeks.

Oliver glanced at his watch. Usually Emmy always got up between eleven and eleven-thirty. If he turned back home now, there would still be enough time to prepare a great breakfast for her like Boston certainly couldn’t offer. Maybe that way he could persuade her of coming home to see her dad more often.

He knew that parents were the last people you wanted to think of during college. He also knew that since puberty had begun, Felicity had been the parent Emmy had mostly turned to. Sometimes she still came to him, but the really important things his little girl always discussed with her mom now. Oliver got that, or at least he got that a little. Some things a growing up girl didn’t want to discuss with her dad. He just wished that once in awhile it would be like in old times when he and Emmy had been inseparable.

Despite all the teasing and jokes about it Oliver had never really wanted to be the kind of parent who tried to keep his children small and young because he couldn’t let go. He just hadn’t known how hard letting go was until Emmy had gone to college, and he had been forced to let go of her. Everyone told you how hard it was to raise a young child, but nobody ever told you how hard it was to be the father to a young woman. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to listen.

When he arrived back at the home, Oliver unlocked the front door and slipped back into the house. He closed the door as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to wake up the kids. It would destroy his plans of cooking the best breakfast he had made in awhile.

“…so, so gentle,” he overheard Emmy’s low voice speaking.

There went his plans of making a breakfast that would always make her come back for more, Oliver thought with a barely audible sigh. He walked towards the kitchen door that was left ajar and had his hand already put to the wooden material when-

“So it was how you hoped your first time would be?”

Oliver felt a tight knot forming in the pit of his stomach and his wife’s words. Five minutes ago he had been stressing about his baby girl going to college and now… this!

He had always known that one day this day would come. Emmy had had one or two boyfriends, and he also knew that she had someone right now. He just hadn’t thought that it was this serious, or that she was even considering doing a step like that anytime soon. Sure, she was nineteen and he should probably be relieved that she had waited so long, but college boys were…

Well, Oliver remembered how he had been in college, and he certainly didn’t want a boy like that for Emmy.

“I don’t know,” Emmy replied to her mother’s question. “I didn’t really have an idea what it would be like, but I guess with everything I heard about how much it can hurt… It was really good. And the second and third time was even better.”

Oliver felt the knot in his stomach tightening and quickly turned around to leave. He shouldn’t eavesdrop because Emmy was obviously having a very private talk to her mother, and Oliver actually didn’t want to hear any about it anyway.

He rushed through the living room and outside into the garden where he sat down on the stairs from the terrace to the lawn. He ducked his head and closed his eyes while taking in a deep breath that might decreased the tightness in his stomach a little.

He knew Emmy was growing up. He knew one day she would graduate college, start a job and get to know someone she would marry and have kids with. He knew all of that. He just… Life had thrown so many obstacles at him. He had broken so many hearts, and he had had his heart broken so many times; he didn’t want that to happen to his baby girl.

Did it make him a bad dad that he wanted to protect her from any emotional pain as long as possible? He knew how much it could damage a person because he had seen it so often in his life and with so many of his loved ones. He didn’t want that for Emmy. He didn’t want that for any of his children.

Oliver didn’t know how long he had been sitting there when he heard the terrace door being opened and closed. He didn’t need to turn his head to see who it was. He knew instinctively, and if he hadn’t known instinctively, he would have known from the way she sat down behind him, put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close until his back was resting against her chest. With a quiet sigh, Oliver put his head to her shoulder and closed his eyes.

“How much of my conversation with our daughter did you hear?” Felicity asked before she pressed her lips to his temple and gently stroked her hand through his short hair.

“Not much,” Oliver whispered back, “and yet it was _too_ much.”

Felicity pressed another kiss to his temple while she was rubbing her hands up and down his biceps. Oliver almost purred like a kitten. He loved the way she comforted him. She had always known best how to do it, even before they had been together. He stayed silent in her equally quiet comfort for awhile, just relaxing into her arms.

“I know she is not that little girl anymore that welcomed me home with a screech whenever I came home. She doesn’t crawl onto the couch to me to cuddle or come back from bed three times each night to give me goodnight kisses,” Oliver stated with a low sigh.

“I would be seriously worried if she still did any of that at her age to be honest,” Felicity replied, making Oliver chuckle.

“I just…” Oliver sighed. “When she was little, she couldn’t get hurt, at least not emotionally because I could protect her from that. But now…”

Felicity nodded. “I know.”

Oliver sighed, turning his head, so he could look at Felicity. He was met with a love in her eyes that still made his stomach flutter.

“Does my need to protect her from getting hurt make me a bad dad?” he asked.

Felicity leaned down and kissed his lips gently before she replied, “I think it makes you a great dad.”

“You think?”

“Yes,” Felicity replied with a nod, “because, although you are worried and don’t want to see her getting hurt, you are not keeping her from living her life. You didn’t come rushing into the kitchen and told her that she was ruining her life. You didn’t make her feel bad about her choice though you don’t like it. You are worried, but you keep that worry to yourself or at least between us which isn’t much of a difference. You are a good dad, Oliver, and I know you want to protect our children from any pain life could possibly send their ways. They need to make their own mistakes, though. You can’t protect them from the pain that will eventually come with their decisions because it needs to be experienced and not only told. They will all fall down once in awhile in their lives, and our responsibility as their parents is not to prevent that from happening, but to help them get back onto their own feet and encourage them to make the next steps, even if they risk falling back down with that again.”

Oliver thought about Felicity’s words for a long moment. He remembered when they had encouraged Emmy to walk on her own. She had fallen a lot, and yet they had always encouraged her to get up and try again. She had gotten up anytime, and no matter how often she had fallen down, she had always gotten back to her feet and tried again. It was just so much easier to let her fall from the small height of a toddler than from cloud nine.

“Do you think she made the right choice?” Oliver asked after awhile, closing his eyes again. “Do you think she was ready?”

Felicity sighed. “I asked her if she was ready, and she said she was. I asked her if Lucas was the right guy, and she said he was.”

Oliver turned his head back to her, looking at Felicity intensely. “But what do _you_ think so?”

“I think that Emmy will come to regret her choice rather sooner than later,” Felicity whispered with a tired smile. “I do think she was ready, but I don’t think it should have been Lucas. He… I know it sounds hard, but I’d be surprised if they still are together when she comes here the next time.”

“I guess you didn’t tell her that?”

“Like I said she needs to make her own mistakes,” Felicity replied. “And maybe I am wrong. Maybe Lucas is a good guy, or maybe he becomes a good guy.”

Oliver looked at her doubtingly. “You have a good insight into human nature, and you are barely ever wrong about the impression a person leaves. Besides, you have inherited your mother’s bullshit detector, and that is never wrong.”

“Maybe this one time,” Felicity said with little hope in her voice, though. “The only thing that matters is that we will be here for her when it turns out that I have been right, though.”

“Yeah…”

Sometimes Oliver just wished it was ten years earlier. Back then long family cuddles had been part of his daily routine, and even his worst problems with the children hadn’t included college or alcohol or broken hearts. Sometimes he just missed those times.

He had needed time to adjust to being a father. He would need time to adjust to being a father of a young woman, too. It would just time some time.

“You came back early from your morning jog,” Felicity said after awhile. “Not in form?”

“I think I proved last night that I am in my best form,” Oliver replied. He straightened up to kiss the underside of her jaw before he added, “I wanted to make Emmy a breakfast she would always come home for, but since she is already up, I guess-“

“Actually she went back to bed,” Felicity replied. “Obviously being awake before eleven on a weekend is unacceptable. Good thing is that it means that you can still make her a breakfast she will always come back for.”

Oliver nodded. “I guess I am going to do that.”

“Great,” Felicity replied and kissed his cheek. “I will go upstairs and get dressed. I have to make a short video call with Gotham later.”

Oliver watched her getting up and walking to the door, smiling at how beautiful she looked, still all messed up like she had just gotten out of bed.”

“Felicity?” he asked, and she turned around, looking at him. “Thank you.”

“Always,” Felicity simply replied with a smile before she stepped into the house and left him alone again.

Oliver took in a deep breath.

Felicity was right with what she had said. They needed to be here for Emmy if she really was falling down from her cloud nine. So if she fell, she fell into his loving hands.


End file.
